If you hadn’t heard, Windows Live blogs are now WordPress-powered. Said honestly, this is awesome because the previous Spaces interface was complete junk. To give you a better idea of how awesome this is, PCMech itself is WordPress-powered. We dig it quite a bit. Upgrading to WP in Spaces is easy: Go to spaces.live.com and login with your Windows Live ID...

Office Live is the free (yes, free) version of Microsoft Office for the web. It is located at office.live.com. The only thing required to use it is a Windows Live account, which for most people means "Hotmail account". This is what it looks like once logged in:   You see your current documents, plus the ability to create new ones on the right. You...

The next iteration of the Windows Live suite is called “Wave 4″ by Microsoft. This will include changes both for local and web applications. On the web app side of things, Hotmail is one of the biggies, and Wave 4 is going to bring about several significant changes. The ones you’ll most likely make most note of are:A single file attachment...

The last time I did a video on this subject, I thought it would work for everybody who used the Windows Live Mail client, however a few said that even with the instructions they still encountered the infamous “red X” box where the signature image should go. Well, I was having none o’ that. I was bound and determined to find a way to get a...

The instant messaging I’m referring to is the traditional old-school way, that being you download a proprietary client, sign up for a free account and then run the client, add buddies/contacts as need be, etc. Such examples are AIM, Yahoo! IM and Windows Live Messenger. The main reason why people aren’t too fond of IM’ing anymore is mainly...

Windows Live Writer is without question the best blogging tool there is. It’s so good that even Mac users like it. If there were ever a killer app for blogging, Windows Live Writer is it. WLW is free and part of the Windows Live suite of applications; it can be downloaded from http://download.live.com. It will run on versions of Windows from XP to the...

I had the opportunity to check out the next version of Windows Live Mail, that being Wave 4, a.k.a. Build 15:…and here’s my take on it. The ribbon interface There are many that say the ribbon interface is one of the worst things Microsoft has ever done, but, the one thing the naysayers always forget to mention is that any clickable function...

In the context of this article I’m referring to the Windows Live Mail the email client and not the email service (Hotmail). When composing an email in WL Mail, most people use HTML to use features such as colored text, bold/italic/underline, and so on. It is true that any email composed in WL Mail can be saved as a web page, and it’s quite easy to...

Something that should be simple but unfortunately is quite difficult is getting an image to appear in an email signature when using the Windows Live Mail email client. After combing through the client and researching how to do this, I finally found a way that works. This supersedes my last document on this subject. See video below for...

For a few years now, the way in which Yahoo! and Windows Live does public profiles is nothing short of ridiculous. There are way too many options, way too many things to turn off, and the real sad part is that most of you who read this didn’t know about all the crapola that comes with a profile from Y! or WLive. This is mainly due to the fact that both...

Windows 7 includes DVD creating software called Windows DVD Maker. It is by far one of the easiest programs to create a DVD with. If you wanted any easier, you’d have to use iDVD on a Mac. The software works wonderfully save for one thing – it doesn’t always handle widescreen formats properly. In some instances you may encounter the situation...

To note up front: This is for Windows Live Movie Maker and not the older Windows Movie Maker. WLMM is something which is a separate download in the Windows Live suite of applications. It does not come bundled with Windows 7 but can be added in easily. The last time I tried this software it was in beta form. Admittedly, I hated it. But now the software is...

Knowing how to check the source, as in the raw "code," of an email is important because there will be times when you need to do it. Why? To check authenticity of an email. Spam and phishing emails are getting more tricky to identify all the time, and your best weapon against this is knowing how to check the source of an email. Unfortunately it is the...

If you use a Windows Live email address, that being any address that ends in @hotmail.com, @msn.com or @live.com, you can access the account right now in the Windows Live Mail client. The immediate advantages of using WL Mail:No ads anywhere in the client No ads sent on outgoing mail Allows for local caching of mail for faster access and being able to read...

This document is old. See this for a better way, with video! In Windows Live Mail (as in the e-mail client and not the web site) the default method for an e-mail signature is nothing but plain text, like this:   You can however create advanced e-mail signatures using the freely available Nvu web page editor. Here’s how it’s done. 1. Download and...

Note: This is for Windows 7 users only. In Windows XP and Vista, when you use the Windows Live Mail client, you can right-click the icon at the bottom so that it only appears as such when the app is minimized: When using the Windows Live Messenger, by default it will also have a small icon: However the problem is that these Windows Live applications do not...

Microsoft has just announced some beta anti-virus/spyware/malware protection software called Microsoft Essentials. It’s free and free is good. This software is only available to people running a legal copy of Windows. This is fine. My copies of XP are all legal as is my Windows 7. After jumping thru several hoops trying to download this thing, I sign in...

Windows Live Mail is a great email client, no question. But one very longstanding complaint is the way it renders fonts. Whereas in other mail clients it’s stupidly easy to make mails look a specific way for text, in Windows Live Mail (and the previous Outlook Express) it is, put politely, a challenge. This tutorial is how to get the fonts to look...

If you run your own web site and run Perl, PHP scripts or the like, there will be instances where you have to edit some files from time to time. The long way to do it is to download the file you need to edit, modify it, then upload it back. The short way is to edit the file "live" on the server directly. Using Notepad++ this is easy to do with...

Since upgrading to Windows 7 I was finally about to try out Windows Live Movie Maker Beta. Summary: I hate it. This software is awful. I have tried hard to find anything good about this app, but the XP version was just so, so much better than this. The only saving grace of this app is that it’s in beta, so I am praying when out of beta this software...